Quantum wrote:This Russia hysteria is getting on my nerves. When did your average boneheaded liberal become a cheerleader for imperialism?

The neocons have been pushing the anti-Russia hysteria for quite some time. Of course the Dems, who have aligned with them would continue with it, plus it helped distract from Dems shit-awful corrupt-as-fuck candidate who lost the election to someone even worse.

BTW, if anyone wants to know more on this topic, watch the documentary A Very Heavy Agenda, about the PNAC agenda pre-9/11 to what it is today. T'was very good and also horrifying. Trailer here:

An unhinged zionist said "Israel is Apartheid racist state" and that made me laugh a lot.

The Immortal Goon wrote:To use an American example, there will be people that say civil rights after slavery should be a local issue. Fine. What if I kill everyone that opposes me in my apartment building and take the survivors as my slaves? Can I weep about my bravely and call the cops coming to stop me aggressors into my sovereign nation?

Silly example TIG because it's non-controversial. What is considered morally right or not can obviously differ between communities, regardless of their size. It makes sense to organize politics locally.

Rugoz wrote:Silly example TIG because it's non-controversial. What is considered morally right or not can obviously differ between communities, regardless of their size. It makes sense to organize politics locally.

What is a legitimate community though? If we are to use the United States, does an ethnic enclave count within a neighborhood that might have nothing to do with the enclave? An entire city? A family in the hills outside the city that doesn't want to be bothered? Their closest neighbors? A state? A county? A church congregation? What about gerrymandering? Who decides what, where, and when?

Local politics are, of course, a great thing to organize politically. But to organize an entire system upon the idea is so nebulous as to be useless.

The Immortal Goon wrote:What is a legitimate community though? If we are to use the United States, does an ethnic enclave count within a neighborhood that might have nothing to do with the enclave? An entire city? A family in the hills outside the city that doesn't want to be bothered? Their closest neighbors? A state? A county? A church congregation? What about gerrymandering? Who decides what, where, and when?

Well I wasn't talking about legitimacy or who decides, my point is that "let local government deal with that issue" is a valid political position by itself.

The Immortal Goon wrote:What is a legitimate community though? If we are to use the United States, does an ethnic enclave count within a neighborhood that might have nothing to do with the enclave? An entire city? A family in the hills outside the city that doesn't want to be bothered? Their closest neighbors? A state? A county? A church congregation? What about gerrymandering? Who decides what, where, and when?

Local politics are, of course, a great thing to organize politically. But to organize an entire system upon the idea is so nebulous as to be useless.

You, like the Democratic party, just don't get it. You have decided local communities are not important. Yes, it can be a fluid term, but virtually everyone associates themselves with a community or communities. People don't like to be told what to do. When your community decides something and national corporations say they will not deal with you, and protesters from other areas come to your city to yell insults at you, then most centrists are going to have some resentment even if they support your cause. Every win was more voters who were changing sides to determine the final battle.The United States is still made up of communities. Liberals want communities to be subservient to the wishes of Los Angeles and New York. You may argue the logic of this, but it does not eliminate the emotion in the issue. You prefer to ignore emotion as a factor, but it is the factor.

I dream of the United Citystates of Earth, where each Citystate has a standardized border such as one whole degree of Latitude by one whole degree of Longitude.

One Degree wrote:You, like the Democratic party, just don't get it. You have decided local communities are not important. Yes, it can be a fluid term, but virtually everyone associates themselves with a community or communities. People don't like to be told what to do. When your community decides something and national corporations say they will not deal with you, and protesters from other areas come to your city to yell insults at you, then most centrists are going to have some resentment even if they support your cause. Every win was more voters who were changing sides to determine the final battle.

As you did not address any of the examples, I will try again with a more specific historical example.

Let us say that the state of Georgia wants Jim Crow. This being a local matter, the federal government says this is a local issue to be worked out.

The city of Atlanta opposes Jim Crow. Do they have a right to oppose the state's local law by being more local?

Let's assume Atlanta goes for it though. Do black neighborhoods in Atlanta have the right to oppose city, state, and county law by virtue of being more local?

Let us assume a black neighborhood does end up opposing city, state, county, and federal law. Does a business within that neighborhood have the right to use Jim Crow because it constitutes a more localized community into itself?

Does a department within that business? Can an individual decide he's going to institute Jim Crow?

You see the problem here. Anything specific immediately becomes problematic.

What if a bunch of gays move into your neighborhood and it becomes a new Castro district. Do the neighbors who lived there before have any more rights, or does the new community supersede them in every way?

These are every day issues that we still deal with, and we haven't adopted some kind of nutty ill-defined, "Locals decide everything!" Policy.

The Immortal Goon wrote:As you did not address any of the examples, I will try again with a more specific historical example.

Let us say that the state of Georgia wants Jim Crow. This being a local matter, the federal government says this is a local issue to be worked out.

The city of Atlanta opposes Jim Crow. Do they have a right to oppose the state's local law by being more local?

Let's assume Atlanta goes for it though. Do black neighborhoods in Atlanta have the right to oppose city, state, and county law by virtue of being more local?

Let us assume a black neighborhood does end up opposing city, state, county, and federal law. Does a business within that neighborhood have the right to use Jim Crow because it constitutes a more localized community into itself?

Does a department within that business? Can an individual decide he's going to institute Jim Crow?

You see the problem here. Anything specific immediately becomes problematic.

What if a bunch of gays move into your neighborhood and it becomes a new Castro district. Do the neighbors who lived there before have any more rights, or does the new community supersede them in every way?

These are every day issues that we still deal with, and we haven't adopted some kind of nutty ill-defined, "Locals decide everything!" Policy.

I am not responding to your points because slavery and racism is always used as a reason why communities should never decide anything for themselves. It is an idiotic argument. The world has moved on. You are simply trying to justify why communities should continue to be forced to obey the will of Los Angeles and New York. If I wanted your morality, then I would live in your community. See how that works. If you don't like my morality then stay the hell out of my community because we resent oppression like everyone else. You simply want to decide who the oppressed should be.

Edit: Let me give an example to try to explain what I mean by different community values. I regularly need to jaywalk across 6 lanes of traffic. It is common for all the traffic to stop while I, or anyone else, walks across. In my opinion, this is stupid but it is a part of who these people are and it is contagious.

I dream of the United Citystates of Earth, where each Citystate has a standardized border such as one whole degree of Latitude by one whole degree of Longitude.

“Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts,” Gilens and Page write:

Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.

“In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover … even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.”

An unhinged zionist said "Israel is Apartheid racist state" and that made me laugh a lot.

The Immortal Goon wrote:Or don't vote for the Democrats at all. Even if we are to assume that the Democrats are something other than an electoral machine (which it obviously is); it could never be reformed until it was chasing the votes that it wanted.

Should there suddenly be a big threat from some socialist group, the Democrats would only bother chasing them so far as they were not losing people in the centre. So it would have to be a giant uprising of votes for the socialists that even spoiled some elections. Only then would the Democratic electoral machine start lurching to the left.

This is essentially the argument: the former want to team up with Neo-Cons and Republican hawks; the latter want to team up with moderate Republican governors. Not listed here is a demand for universal healthcare, building a space fleet, infrastructure, strengthening union protection, getting women equal pay, giving jobs and jobs training to the population as a whole, or emptying prisons of non-violent offenders. That would be a platform that would mean something—just like, even when they were out in the wilderness, the GOP very firmly said it was going to repeal Obamacare and lower taxes on corporations, etc, etc, etc.

The Democrats don't want any of those things. Sure they're more open to it than the Republicans, but whenever they have the chance the lick the paws that feed them from big insurance companies and private prisons just as cravenly as Republicans.

And why not? They are just as guilty as the Republicans in unconstitutionally murdering leftists and ripping apart leftist organizations for two centuries.

The problem with that strategy is that the party can't run in the opposite direction of it's candidates. If a massive uprising of socialists started spoiling elections they still couldn't run to the left because their base would be picking increasingly right wing candidates.

Even if those right wing candidates tried to throw the left some bones and rhetoric why would you expect those leftists to start voting for right wing inauthentic politicians over their ideal candidate that they already voted for?

Best case scenario would be if the GOP collapsed and you somehow became one of the two major parties.

It is far easier to grow your faction in the Democratic party so that you were selecting candidates and dragging the rest of the party and country to the left.

IMO people will follow as the candidates shift left, but they won't of you try to attack them from the outside to force them left. People are fundamentally tribalistic. They will follow their leaders into any ideological briar patch but you won't drag them by force into a land of milk and honey.

The core message in 2018 will be decided by what sort of people win primaries. It's divided now because nobody knows in advance what will end up happening. The ones already elected can be replaced, but if people don't start fighting inside the party then nothing will change.

What the Democratic party is now won't matter anymore than what it was a hundred years ago matters now. If only people would wake up from their apathy and idealism and actually work for it.

My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.

Apathy and idealism is Mike's code for not voting for a right wing Tyrant who handed Libya to jihadis. Why would anyone on the left want anything to do with Killery or the Democrats? They are on the hard right by the developed world's standard.

Actually I would be mostly fine with someone who voted for their candidate in the primary and then not voting for the winner in the general. It's not as effective and even somewhat counter productive but it's far better than just silencing yourself entirely (apathy) or voting for Jill Stein because maybe one day by not ever voting for the Democrats or a candidate within the party who represents you they will run a candidate who does somehow for some reason (idealism).

Triple all that when your talking about local candidates who are arguably more important in the long run than the presidential candidate at any particular time.

My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.

One Degree wrote:I am not responding to your points because slavery and racism is always used as a reason why communities should never decide anything for themselves. It is an idiotic argument. The world has moved on. You are simply trying to justify why communities should continue to be forced to obey the will of Los Angeles and New York. If I wanted your morality, then I would live in your community. See how that works. If you don't like my morality then stay the hell out of my community because we resent oppression like everyone else. You simply want to decide who the oppressed should be.

You are not responding because I'm using a historical example. I could literally use the same example all over the world.

You also didn't respond to the idea of your neighborhood turning into a gay area and what rights the original property owners may or may not have.

Your example is that jay walking is socially permissible where you live. Same with where I live though technically illegal.

So?

Your argument and lack of any positive platform actually dovetails nicely with the rest of the discussion here. Like the Democrats, you have nothing to offer aside from pouting about how you feel like I'm a tyrant for pointing out that your ideology is completely without foundation. Like the Democrats, you are doing nothing to even try to put together a positive platform that has a direction. Like the Democrats all you have to offer is that things aren't optimal now, so we should just trust your vision that you refuse to elaborate upon or articulate. Like the Democrats, you act like everyone is ignoring you by not engaging you on empty rhetoric with no actual meaning.

And like the Democrats, you are trapped using relitively abstract moral arguments for theoretical conditions that you can't concretely put into words because there is nothing there with which to construct them.

@mikema63

The primaries are difficult to get into. Already from stepped one, you're voting for people that have the DNC machine's prints on them. Some are better than others; but once you've jumped in, the DNC machine has already partially succeeded in pulling you in as the rest of it lurches further to the right.

The GOP had to deal with the Reform Party and the TEA Party. Roger Stone had to destroy the former, the latter was invited into the GOP tent. The Democrats have not had to bother doing either to any modern parties.

Further, we are working at similar but different goals. I don't think the Democrats can be salvaged. Used strategically as a cudgel, as long as the GOP is being played too, but it is what it is.

The mission is to change the zeitgeist; to stop the reactionary turn and move to the left again, for everyone. Part of that is stopping the Dems from advancing to where the GOP was ten years ago; part of it is agitation from the left for its own sake. Because, ultimately, as you said, the DNC is an umbrella organization that is there to shill votes. And there's ultimately only so much such an organization like that can do at all.

Famously, in my circles, the Irish Parliamentary Party died partially because of this. It could kinda-sorta get education bills through, was useless with labour issues, had to suspend parliamentary rules entirely to address land reform, and even then it died partially because it couldn't address specifics. It isn't built to do it. Nor are the Democrats.

Sanders follows in the steps of Michael Harrington, socialists attempting to use the Democrats as a form of entryism. That's putting the cart before the horse though; first the left must demand it. And that's going to be a long, slow, process dependent upon accepting the limitations of the Democratic Party.

You are not responding because I'm using a historical example. I could literally use the same example all over the world.

I am a history major who taught history for 17 years. I am not the least bit intimidated by your historical examples. They are simply irrelevant.

You also didn't respond to the idea of your neighborhood turning into a gay area and what rights the original property owners may or may not have.

Because when I am talking about all communities having more control over their lives, individual examples are meaningless and a deliberate distraction by you. Each community will make these decisions, not me.

Your example is that jay walking is socially permissible where you live. Same with where I live though technically illegal.

So?

Again, you just don't get it. My example had nothing to do with the legality of jaywalking. My point is when you standardize morality you start losing all these community quirks based upon their community values.

Your argument and lack of any positive platform actually dovetails nicely with the rest of the discussion here. Like the Democrats, you have nothing to offer aside from pouting about how you feel like I'm a tyrant for pointing out that your ideology is completely without foundation. Like the Democrats, you are doing nothing to even try to put together a positive platform that has a direction. Like the Democrats all you have to offer is that things aren't optimal now, so we should just trust your vision that you refuse to elaborate upon or articulate. Like the Democrats, you act like everyone is ignoring you by not engaging you on empty rhetoric with no actual meaning.

I was pointing out why the Democrats could not win local elections. You are the one who are trying to distract from that by wanting me to give you a complete layout including all communities' laws of my local autonomy plans. You simply do not want to discuss community values because it is contrary to your own ideology, so you use deflection.

And like the Democrats, you are trapped using relitively abstract moral arguments for theoretical conditions that you can't concretely put into words because there is nothing there with which to construct them.

What is abstract and difficult to understand about the Democratic party refusing to understand the same things you refuse to understand and that is Local Communities resent being told what to do by national organizations. It is simple human psychology that was ignored. You see, I am discussing feelings because that is what you and the Democrats did not understand and apparently never will.

Edit: Correct me if I am wrong, but our real argument is you think everything should be completely designed by an expert committee and then enacted everywhere, where as I think communities should just be left alone to do as they please. You either don't trust people or you just dislike confusion?

I dream of the United Citystates of Earth, where each Citystate has a standardized border such as one whole degree of Latitude by one whole degree of Longitude.

The primaries are difficult to get into. Already from stepped one, you're voting for people that have the DNC machine's prints on them. Some are better than others; but once you've jumped in, the DNC machine has already partially succeeded in pulling you in as the rest of it lurches further to the right.

Actually on a local level it's very easy. You just have to collect 1-2 hundred signitures or pay a few hundred bucks in the deadline. There are a few rules but those are relatively easy.

Then you just go door to door and talk to voters, try and raise some money from them. You can get voter lists and addresses from the county. I'm always a little surprised that people think it's harder than it is.

As for the rest perhaps it's best if people work both strategies. Then which ever one is right might actually win. I think though, that to change the zeitgeist you have to push from within. People will always close ranks on people outside their group trying to push them.

My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.

One Degree wrote:Correct me if I am wrong, but our real argument is you think everything should be completely designed by an expert committee and then enacted everywhere, where as I think communities should just be left alone to do as they please. You either don't trust people or you just dislike confusion?

Were it all done my way, communities would all take care of themselves and each other just like a functional family does. Each individual would be free of alienation and exploitation. Worldwide. Getting to that point will, however, take work.

I do not think we are even having an argument as I have absolutely no idea what the premise of your position is.

@skinster I support it to. Actually, Medicare for everyone is what I support. The question though is why do Americans support it? Our governments did nothing to prevent our private health care from ripping us off. Despite what you might believe from the rare cases in the paper, malpractice suits are rarely won in the US. My health care provider, at one time, moved it's headquarters to the Cayman Islands. The government's interest was served by encouraging outrageous health care costs. This guarantees we must turn to them for the solution. They then have control, which is what all governments ultimate goal is.So, yes I support it, but I am disgusted with my government for forcing me into this position. I remember what things were like. I did not have insurance when my first two kids were born, but the bills were not difficult to pay even on my very modest income. No one thinks of national health care unless they are being robbed.

I dream of the United Citystates of Earth, where each Citystate has a standardized border such as one whole degree of Latitude by one whole degree of Longitude.